At O.H. Predictive Insights, we understand that market research is the backbone of the most successful organizations; the need to gain insight into how best target audiences and effectively communicate solutions to their needs is crucial for that organization's strategic planning. Your research results need to be accurate in order to be actionable, and that means you need to partner with the most appropriate market research provider for your objectives.
There’s an old saying that 'bigger is always better.' Many organizations feel that applies to market research companies. But the truth is that relying upon a boutique and unbiased market research firm to provide you the most accurate research results can be a winning proposition when compared to larger research providers. Here’s what you might not know about the benefits of using a boutique market research firm.
A Boutique Market Research Firm is Quality over Quantity
When you’re part of a boutique market research firm, you know you can’t compete head-to-head with your larger competitors. Larger firms with countless staff have an extremely high volume of projects on a regular basis, which increases the risks against being able to provide an acceptable standard of quality and customized strategies and insights to each client. Specialized independent firms, however, excel in the ability to provide the highest-quality experience to clients on an individual basis.
It’s simply a matter of survival: unlike larger firms, boutique companies usually don’t have the same staff or resources. This means they tend to handle fewer client projects at a time, but that also means all the care and attention of the entire company gets poured into these projects more completely than at larger firms. The end result is a market research campaign conducted by passionate, dedicated experts that are driven to succeed — and who aren’t juggling too many multiple accounts to concentrate on yours!
Higher Levels of Synergy
Just because a marketing firm has several teams of researchers at their disposal doesn’t mean these teams are optimized for providing the best results when conducting and analyzing market research. The makeup of these teams at larger companies tend to be fluid, with personnel coming and going nearly constantly, either due to reassignment or transitioning to other roles. This makes the cohesion of the team working on a client project tenuous at best.
Things couldn’t be more different at a boutique market research firm. Teams are tight-knit and well-practiced when it comes to working together in ways that produce the most effective results. With just one team of dedicated professionals, synergy levels are high. When you know every aspect of how your team functions, optimizing roles becomes easy. This improves overall performance in ways that larger firms might lack.
Greater Flexibility and Customization
Larger marketing firms tend to be one-size-fits-all. They offer standard packages and often fall into habitual standard operating procedures in order to make it easier to process multiple projects submitted by a multitude of clients in order to provide efficient service. This leads to rigidity where clients have to find themselves a place within the marketing firm’s system instead of the marketer adapting to the personal needs of the client.
This is not the case with boutique market research firms. With much smaller client partner rosters, boutique companies can provide a tailored fit to each and every one of their clients’ needs. Approaches are customized, leading to greater flexibility when it comes to adapting to situations on the fly, providing quick response times outside of business hours when it comes to crucial projects, and a general willingness to meet specific and sometimes even esoteric client requests. Not only that, but research clearly shows that workplace flexibility can increase employee satisfaction by 73% and productivity by as much as 78%. Is it any wonder why our staff here at O.H. Predictive Insights is happy to be here?
Better Communication and Organization
As anyone with experience can tell you, the larger an organization gets the more difficult it becomes to keep organized. Lines of communication become harder to maintain efficiently, which slows down progress on projects and can result in mistakes being made that could have been avoided in the first place with a smaller, better organized team. The sheer energy and resources that go into maintaining organization and communication on a larger scale are, therefore, often massive. In fact, researchers say poor workplace communication can cost as much as $37 billion a year in lost productivity.
But in a boutique company composed of a smaller, dedicated team, organizational chaos is kept at a minimum. Communication is more direct, which results in fewer opportunities for mistakes to happen. Additionally, with no time and energy requirement for keeping a larger firm organized, boutique firms can reinvest those resources in providing better, more detailed results for their client partners in ways a larger market research firm wouldn’t necessarily be able to deliver.
Higher Cost-Effectiveness
Conducting market research can be resource-heavy. There’s a lot that goes into a campaign, starting with design and implementation, research data collection and analysis, and then interpretation to reveal trends and produce strategic insights. All of this can cost a pretty penny. In fact, the industry generated more than $47 billion in revenue in 2018 alone. Large-scale research firms, with dozens or even hundreds of staff members, need that money to survive; even if you’ve only got one team assigned to your project, the company’s rates are naturally going to be higher because they have much larger overhead costs.
Meanwhile, a boutique market research firm doesn’t have nearly the same overhead costs as a larger firm. They’re not paying the same costs as a massive company that has to rent an entire office building, and they tend to embrace frugality and leverage their personal and excellent relationships with vendors to negotiate costs and stretch their operating budgets as far as possible. Smaller firms pass that savings along to their client partners in the form of lower, more affordable rates, and all without compromising performance quality.
The Final Score
Let’s review, shall we? Boutique market research firms proudly offer you the following benefits:
- Flexibility and adaptability to client requests
- High-quality, individualized service
- Driven, passionate staff
- Personalized attention and better communication
- Higher levels of flexibility and availability
- Cost-effective results
In the end, the choice is clear: a smaller market research firm always provides better value than a larger one, hands down.
Solutions from O.H. Predictive Insights
When it comes to boutique market research, we know what we’re doing. If you’re looking for a company that can provide you the most accurate and actionable research data and analysis services anywhere, whether it’s in our flagship Southwest region or beyond, you’ll find the difference that personal attention provides. Click the button below to talk to an expert or get in touch with us at the contact form at the bottom of the page. We can't wait to work with you!